Adjustable and combined furniture



M. THUM- ADJUSTABLE AND COMBINED FURNITURE.

APPLICATION FILED OCT. 29, 1915.

1,195,627, Patented Aug. 22, 1916.

- MAETI THUM,

OF ROCHESTER, NEW YORK.

ADJUSTABLE AND COMBINED FURNITURE.

Specification of Letters Patent. Patented Aug, 1916,

Application filed October 29, 1915. Serial No. 58,644.

To all whom it may concern."

Be it known that I, MARTIN TH M, a citizen of the United States, and resident of Rochester, in the county of Monroe and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Adjustable and Combined Furniture, of which the following is a specification.

' This invention relates particularly to furniture of the kind in which a desk and a chair are combined as a unit, and in which provision is made for adjustment of the height of the desk.

In furniture for usein typewriting, or in the school-room, it has been proposed to mount a desk and a chair on separate legs or standards, but to connect them by a yoke or connecting-member of some form, so as to combine them into one unit, the connectingmember serving to retain them in the proper relation, and to cause them to aiford mutual support, and the combined unit being move able as a single article of furniture.

One object of the present invention 1s to improve a combined article of furniture of the ldnd referred to in such a manner as to make it more comfortable and convenient for the user. In previous devices it has been proposed to mount the desk upon a central standard, and to connect that standard with the chair by a centrally-disposed yoke or rod, or to provide the desk with lateral supports or legs, and to connect the chair with one of these lateral supports. Both of these arrangements are unsatisfactory in point of the comfort and convenience -of the user, however, since the first arrangement prevents the feet from being placed in the natural position on the floor directly in front of the user, while the second arrangement makes it diflicult to enter and leave the chair except from one side, and this latter arrangement is inferior structurally in the matter of rigidity and strength.

In accordance with the present invention, I employ a central yoke, so as to produce a construction which is strong and rigid with the use of a minimum amount of mate-- rial, but in place of providing the desk with a central standard to which this yoke is attached, I provide the desk with lateral supports or legs, leaving the space under the middle of the desk clear, and the yoke, which extends forwardly from the chair and close to, but clear of, the floor-surface,

of attachment at at a substantial height above the floor-surcurves upwardly under the desk to a point the middle of the desk and face. Owing to this arrangement-there is nothing to obstruct the space, beneath the forward part of the desk, in which the users feet are naturally placed, while at the other object of the present invention is to 7 provide a simple, strong and convenient construction and arrangement of the parts for mounting the desk upon its legs or supports, and providing for a wide range of vertical adjustment in the desk. To thisend I employ an arrangement the desk are connected by a transverse member at or near their upper ends, the legs and the transverse member thus constituting a rigid and unitary support, and in which the desk-body is arranged with a downwardly-open space, at the front, into which this supporting-member is received, the desk-body being vertically adjustable upon the support.

Where the desk of'a combined desk and chalr of the type in question is supported only by two lateral legs located near the front of the desk, I have found that when there is no one seated in the chair a downward pressure applied to the rear part of the desk may cause a considerable springing or distortion of the parts, and a corresponding tilting of the desk-top, owing particularly to the fact that when the chair is unoccupied there is no substantial obstruction to the sliding of the chair-legs over the floor-surface. V V

Another object of the present invention is to sustain the desk more rigidly against such movement, and to this end, in addition to the main supporting-legs of the desk, I provide supplementary legs, branching from the main legs and extending rearwardly therefrom, so as to-afford points of support for the desk more nearly beneath its rear extremity. These legs are not, however, spaced so far from the main legs, at

in which the legs of their lower ends, as to grevent the desk and mutual support, and for this purpose they.

chair from, having su stantially the fourpoint support characteristic of the general arrangement of the invention.

Other objects of the invention, and the features of construction by which they are attained, will be set forth hereinafter in connection with the description of the illustrated embodiment of the invention.

In the accompanying drawings :Figure 1 is a side-elevation, partly in vertical section, of a combined desk and chair embodying the present invention; Fig. 2 is a detail-view, in horizontal section and on a larger scale than Fig. 1, showing particularly the connection between the desk and its supporting-member; and Fig. 3 is a perspective view of the combined desk and chair.

The invention is illustrated as embodied in a combined desk and chair in which the chair comprises a seat 5 and an adjustable back 6. The seat is mounted on a vertical stem 7, which is rotatable in a tubular socket 8.

.The desk comprlses a front 9, sides 10,

back 11, bottom 12, fixed top 13, and hinged cover 14, all formed and arranged in the manner common in school-desks, except that the bottom 12 is cut away at its forward portion for a reason hereinafter described. The combined desk and chair has four main points of support provided, respectively, by two laterallyextending legs 15 which immediately support the chair an are fixed at their upper ends to the socket 8, and two legs 16 which furnish immediate support to the desk and are located near the sides and front of the latter. The legs prevent lateral tilting of the desk and chair, but for prevention of relative fore-and -aft tilting the desk and chairdepend upon their are connected by a yoke 17 in the form of a stout metal tube or rod. This yoke is rigidly fixed, at its rear end, to the socket 8 and the legs 15 of the chair, and it extends thence downwardly to a point near thefloon. It is then curved upwardly toward the front of the desk, and is fixed to a transverse member in the form of a wooden board 18.

The board 18 constitutes a connectingmember between the desk-legs 16. Each of theselegs is formed of sheet-metal bent in such a manner that the lower part is tubular, as shown in Fig. 1, while the upper part is channel-shaped, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. The channel-shaped part of the leg embraces the end of the board, and is provided, at its margins, with inwardly-directed flanges 19 which are buried in the wood of the board, while rivets 20 clamp the sides of the channel, firmly against the wood. By this construction the legs are attached rigidly to the board 18, so that the legs and the board constitute a unitary rigid support for the desk.

and the body of the bracket the leg 16 isseated, and is vertically movable to provide for vertical adjustment of the desk-body.

The desk-body is adjustably fixed upon the support by means of a through-bolt 24, which is seated in a slot in the rear surface of the board 18 and passes, at its ends,

through vertical slots in the brackets 21, as shown particularly, in Fig. 3, the bolt being provided, at one end, with a nut 25 by which it may be tightened and loosened. The desk thus" has a range of adjustment equal to the length of the slots in the brackets, and by extending the support upwardly into the open space within the body of the desk, I am able to provide for a much greater rangeof adjustment than would otherwise be practical, while preserving a long bearing between the desk-body and the support such as is necessary between these parts.

The precise manner in which the yoke 17 is connected to the desk-support is not material to the present invention, but I have shown a mode of connection substantially similar to that disclosed in my application for Letters Patenti of the United States filed April 14, 1915, Serial No. 21,461. The forward end of the yoke is attached to the board 18 by a horizontal pivot'26, and a stamped sheet-metal member or plate 27 is fixed to the yoke at a lower point, and provides arms extending laterally from the yoke. The ends of these arms are slotted to insure a rigid connection concentrically with the pivot 26, and are connected with the board by bolts 28. This arrangement is such that when the bolts are loosened the pivotal movement of the yoke,

the stem 7 is supported in the socket 8 by means of a collar 29, which is fixed to the stem by a pin 30. By providing a series of holes in the stem to receive the pin, various positions of vertical adjustment in the chair are provided for. The collar has a downwardly projecting portion 31, forming two shoulders which cooperate with a fixed stoplug 32, and thus a rotative movement in either direction is arrested before the chairback can come into engagement with the desk.

In order to support the desk more firmly against downward pressure on its rear portion, particularly when the chair is not occupied, I employ supplementary legs 33, which branch rearwardly from the desk-legs 16, and engage the floor a short distance in the rear of the latter. tary legs are braced by horizontal rods 34 connecting their lower portions with the legs 16. While these supplementary legs effectively serve the intended purpose, they do not substantially interfere with the comfort of the user of the desk, or the convenience of ingress or egress, nor are they spaced at a sufiicient' distance from the main desk-legs 16; to substantially interfere with the accommodation ofv the combined desk and chair to inequalities in the floor-surface, as above described.

My invention is not limited to the embodi- These supplemenment thereof hereinbefore described and illustrated in the accompanying drawings, but it may be embodied in various other forms within the nature of the invention as it is defined in the following claims.

I claim 1. The combination, with a desk-body, of a bracket attached thereto at each side thereof and extending downwardly therefrom and upwardly therein, each bracket having at its forward margin an inwardly-directed flange, a'support for the desk-body comprising legs and a connecting member, said legs being arranged between said brackets and their flanges, and means for adjustably securing said desk-body to its said support.

2. The combination, with a desk-body, of a support therefor comprising legs and a connecting member, said legs being formed of sheet metal bent into channel shape at their upper parts to receive the ends of said connecting member and having marginal flanges bent inwardly toward each other which enter the connecting member on each side thereof, and means for fixing said support to said desk-body.

MARTIN THUM. 

